• DOI:10.1093/mnras/stx809
• Corpus ID: 28788870

Periodic and quasi-periodic attractors for the spin-orbit evolution of Mercury with a realistic tidal torque

@article{Bartuccelli2017PeriodicAQ,
  title={Periodic and quasi-periodic attractors for the spin-orbit evolution of Mercury with a realistic tidal torque},
  author={Michele V. Bartuccelli and Jonathan H. B. Deane and Guido Gentile},
  journal={Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  year={2017},
  volume={469},
  pages={127-150}
}

• M. Bartuccelli, J. Deane, G. Gentile
• Published 3 March 2017
• Physics
• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

In this paper, we make a detailed study of the spin-orbit dynamics of Mercury, as predicted by the realistic model which has been recently introduced in a series of papers mainly by Efroimsky and Makarov. We present numerical and analytical results concerning the nature of the librations of Mercury’s spin in the 3:2 resonance. The results provide evidence that the librations are quasi-periodic in time, consisting of a slow oscillation, with an amplitude of order of arcminutes, superimposed on the 88-day libration. This contrasts with recent astronomical observations and hence suggests that the 3:2 resonance in which Mercury has been trapped might have been originally described by a large-amplitude quasi-periodic libration which, only at a later stage, with the formation of a molten core, evolved into the small-amplitude libration which is observed nowadays.